Why so many bad passwords? Because the rules allow them.

A recent study by security company Trustwave found that the most common computer passwords are still variations on the word “password.”

That news won’t make anyone spit out their morning coffee; the prevalence of bad passwords is an established fact of life. But the report does shed light on why bad passwords are so common and offers suggestions for reducing the problem.

Trustwave’s 2012 Global Security Report, a comprehensive look at the security landscape, includes a section on passwords that delves into weaknesses in user behavior, administrative policy and the technologies used to manage passwords.

The company’s SpiderLabs studied 2.5 million passwords used at organizations and found that about 5 percent of them used a variation on “password,” such as “Password1,” “Password2,” “Passw0rd,” “Password123," and plain old “password.” Also popular were variations on “welcome,” such as “WeIcome,” “Welcome1,” and so on. And the always-reliable “123456” made an appearance, too.

Why? One reason, the report states, is that password management systems allow it, especially when set to their lowest level of complexity.

For the study, the lab team focused on Windows Active Directory, since just about every organization uses it to store user accounts. The default settings for AD require that passwords be at least six characters long and contain characters from at least three of five categories: uppercase, lowercase, numerals between 0 and 9, special characters, and Unicode characters. It also requires that the password not contain three or more characters from the user’s name.

Users will chose the path of least resistance, particularly if they have to remember a password, so they’ll usually choose the easier three categories: upper- and lowercase letters and throw in a number. Hence, a lot of “Password1” — which, the report points out, meets the same complexity requirements as “X$nc*(24,” or any other combination that makes use of all five categories.

And even though most organizations require that passwords be changed every so often, Windows AD’s default settings don’t forbid changing to similar passwords, so a user can change “Password1” to “Password2” to “Password3,” the report states.

When people aren’t falling back on “password” and “welcome” variations, they still tend to build their passwords around common, correctly spelled English words. Popular sources of passwords included months of the year, U.S. states, the seasons and names found in the list of the top 100 babies’ names for 2011.

And they don’t mix it up much with special characters. Of Trustwave’s list of the 25 most common passwords, only one — “P@ssw0rd”— contained a special character. Such passwords are not only vulnerable to a dictionary attack but fairly easy to guess outright.

But there are things administrators and users can do to make them better, Trustwave says.

“The solution to password security starts with eliminating weaker, older and insecure technologies,” the report states. “In the case of Windows AD, the use of LAN Manager for password storage simply needs to go.”

LAN Manager was originally used as a hashing algorithm for pre-Windows NT systems, and even though Microsoft disabled it starting with the Vista and Server 2008 operating systems, it still is common with XP and Server 2003 systems.

For Windows systems, Trustwave recommends using NT Hash-based storage, which allows for a larger, 128-bit key space and Unicode. The report also recommends using third-party cryptographic tools of the kind available in Unix systems.

And users who want better complexity in a password they can still remember need to go long. “[I]t’s time to stop thinking of passwords as words, and more as phrases,” the report states.

“Given that many rainbow tables have reached eight to nine or more characters for recovering NT passwords, length is one of the few effective constraints left,” the report’s authors write. As a result, “ThisIsMyPasswordNoReallyItIs” becomes more effective than “X$nc*(24” — and is easier to remember, to boot.

Based on the evidence to date, it appears that bad password will be with us for as long as people have to create and remember them. But, Trustwave’s report states, improved storage methods and better policies for choosing passwords could do a lot to ameliorate the problem.

About the Author

Kevin McCaney is editor of Defense Systems. Follow him on Twitter: @KevinMcCaney.

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Reader Comments

Wed, Mar 14, 2012
SEflorida

ameliorate.... now I've got my new password. "Hey Jude, take this bad song and ameliorate it..."

Tue, Mar 13, 2012
Larry

Here's another one I had to deal with recently: Verizon. Their internet service passwords accept only letters and numbers. No keyboard symbols. No ASCII or unicode symbols. Just letters and numbers. How's that for weak, and it's not the users fault.

Tue, Mar 13, 2012
Larry

The biggest problem is systems that limit the number of characters, some are 15 max, which limits your creativity to make a password that is memorable. Most websites I've made passwords for refuse to accept any non-keyboard characters, even if they're just ASCII, let alone unicode. I tried unicode in a password for work, it was accepted, but it wouldn't work when I tried to log back in. It's as though the password got altered somehow -maybe each unicode character got changed to a question mark (?) as when you try to save unicode characters in a text file.

Tue, Mar 13, 2012
Cowboy Joe

The weak link isn't particularly the passwords - more like the carbon based wet computer that has to do the password management. Some college boys (and girls) got some grants to study passwords like business problems - given a variable number of passwords, complexity rules, security of the systems etc., what level of "investment" gives me most value, or more appropriately, the least loss. Tokens and biometrics help bunches, but for the most part, were so far off-peak now pretty much anything we change will improve the return. We need to stick that in our cyber-pipe and smoke it.

Tue, Mar 13, 2012
SoutheastUS

Passwords that have to be remembered are always going to be weak.Use biometrics or RFID tokens.